


leave what's heavy behind

by saltsanford



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Self-Defense Lessons, Violence, lots of cursing bc johnny, past physical assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28200432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/pseuds/saltsanford
Summary: In which Johnny teaches Carmen basic self-defense, argues with Daniel in a parking lot, and has a heart-to-heart with Miguel. Canon-compliant, set between episodes 7 & 8, season 2.
Relationships: Carmen Diaz/Johnny Lawrence, Daniel LaRusso & Johnny Lawrence, Miguel Diaz & Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 32
Kudos: 101





	leave what's heavy behind

**Author's Note:**

> title from the the song "heavy" by birdtalker, which is on approximately 45 different character and/or ship playlists of mine don't look at me
> 
> this is just basically three conversations that were begging to be written so i mashed them all together into one fic, ENJOY

The thing is, Johnny’s never taught anyone shit prior to this.

He can be honest enough with himself to admit that his change of heart in teaching Miguel wasn’t entirely about helping him learning to defend against those bullies. That was a part of it, sure, but a smaller part than Johnny was proud of. At least at first.

The larger part had everything to do with how right it felt to fight again, with how fucking desperate he’d been to do something he was good at. He had no job, a shitty apartment, and a son who hated him, but he _did_ know how to kick ass, and he could show this scrawny kid how to do it too.

The thing _is,_ Johnny was surprised to realize thirty minutes into his first real lesson with Miguel, that even though he’s never taught anyone shit before, he _likes_ teaching this annoying kid. He likes it a lot. He likes Miguel a lot too, he eventually admits to himself, and all of the other pain in the ass kids who begin to fill his dojo.

As the months go by, Johnny finds himself thinking about lesson plans constantly. He grins for hours when Aisha breaks her first board, celebrates like it’s Christmas morning the first time Bert knocks a much larger student to the ground, feels something in his chest knit itself back together every time he catches sight of the faded snake on the back of his old gi, the one Miguel wore so proudly. There’d been a moment, after Johnny had noticed just how starkly the worn fabric stood out in a room full of new gis, that he thought he’d better get Miguel a nicer one, until he’d overheard Miguel telling half the dojo that _this used to be sensei_ _’s old gi, cool right, he wore it when he was training for his competition back in the eighties_.

So yeah, Johnny thinks he might be good at this, too—not just the fighting thing, but the teaching thing. Watching the dojo full of his kids working through their drills, he’s shocked at how far they’ve come over the summer. They’re getting better, not just their technique, but their confidence.

 _I_ _’m making a difference in their life,_ he’d told the stupid All Valley committee, _and they_ _’re making a difference in mine._

He’d meant it to sound cheesy and heartfelt, the kind of nonsense he’d expect the sort of people Daniel LaRusso called friends to eat up with a spoon. It had worked, but Johnny had realized the moment those words came out of his mouth that he’d actually meant them.

Johnny leans against the doorway to his office and watches as they pack up after their lessons, talking and flirting and lingering, always lingering. The _bye sensei Lawrences_ grow less and less frequent until it’s just Miguel, who grins at him before running out after Tory. Johnny shakes his head and heads into his office to do some paperwork. At least Kreese had organized all of that boring bullshit before he left.

He’s in there for maybe thirty minutes when he hears the front door open. Johnny stretches, tossing the clipboard onto the desk and walking into the dojo. “Welcome to—”

He stops dead when he sees Carmen standing the doorway, dressed in leggings and a red windbreaker, her curls bound back in a tight braid. She’d visited the dojo only once before, several weeks after the disastrous Halloween dance. “I want to see what you’re teaching my son,” she’d told him, then pulled a chair right out of his office and placed it on the edge of the mats.

“There aren’t any parents allowed in class,” Johnny had told her weakly, while Miguel looked on in horror between the two of them.

“Mom,” he’d finally whispered, mortified. “You can’t be here—”

She’d sat pointedly in the chair and glared so fiercely that Johnny gave it up. He owed her that much, at least. It wasn’t so bad, once he and Miguel sank into their normal rhythm. Carmen had been so quiet and still that Johnny kept forgetting she was there, only to remember after he’d knocked Miguel on his ass or told him not to be a baby. By the end of the class, he had been convinced she was about to drag the kid away from him forever, but she’d only stood toe to toe with him for a while with that same piercing gaze, as if trying to read something in his face.

“That’s your old uniform? The one Miggy wears?”

“Gi,” he’d corrected. “Uh, yeah, it was mine.”

“Mmmm.” She had stared at him for another several long, agonizing seconds, while Miguel fidgeted anxiously in the background, before pulling something out of her purse and pressing it into his hand. “This is a spare inhaler, in case Miguel has an asthma attack and forgets to bring his. Keep it in your office for him, please.”

And then she’d swept out of the dojo, leaving Johnny staring at the stupid inhaler, somehow feeling both like a massive asshole and like he’d just passed the biggest test of his life.

That had been almost a year ago. Johnny had been to Carmen’s house several times for dinner and they always stopped to chat outside of their apartment doors, but he hadn’t expected to ever see her back in the dojo.

Yet here she is.

Carmen looks a little nervous, but offers him a smile. “Hi Johnny.”

Johnny relaxes slightly. She doesn’t look ready to kill him for some unforeseen reason, at least not right away. “Hey, Carmen. Come in…Miguel’s not here though, he left a half hour ago...”

“Oh, good.” Carmen looks relieved. “You’re alone, then?”

Johnny stares at her for a beat too long, reminds himself that she’s most definitely not hitting on him, that Carmen isn’t so much out of his league as on an entirely different planet. “Uh. Yeah, I’m alone. What’s up?”

Carmen hesitates. “First I need to ask that you don’t tell Miguel I was here.”

A prickle of unease crawls up the back of his neck. “Is he okay?”

“Oh, yes—it’s nothing like that,” Carmen assures him, and Johnny’s heart rate goes back to normal.

“C’mon, let’s talk in my office. And don’t worry, I won’t say anything to him.”

Carmen slips her shoes off and follows him across the mats. “Thank you, Johnny. I’m sorry, I should’ve called first—”

“No no, you don’t need to call,” Johnny says firmly. “Come by anytime. You want a—” he stops himself from saying _beer_ just in time— “a water, or something?”

“Yes, please.”

He tosses her a plastic bottle from the mini fridge and watches as she sets her purse neatly on the chair without taking a seat herself. There’s a tension in the way she’s holding her shoulders, in the way she fiddles with the water bottle between her hands. “Carmen,” he says, and she looks up at him. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Yes,” she says, with another one of those reassuring smiles, but Johnny’s becoming less and less convinced with each passing second. “I am, really. This is going to sound a little silly, but I was actually hoping…well. That you could give me a few private karate lessons.”

Johnny’s imaginations kicks itself into high gear at the phrase _private karate lessons_ before he forces himself back down to earth. “You…want to learn karate?”

“Just a few lessons. More basic self-defense than breaking boards.” She sets down her water bottle on the desk and, after a moment of hesitation, removes her windbreaker. “I thought maybe—”

But Johnny can no longer hear what she’s saying over the sudden rush of blood in his ears. The reason she was wearing a jacket in this heatwave becomes clear at once, as he stares two ugly bruises circling her arms just above the elbows and another wrapping around her left wrist.

“What the fuck?” Johnny stops himself from lunging at her in a panic just in time, and instead reaches gingerly for her arm. Carmen doesn’t flinch, just lets him examine the bruise on her wrist, the bruise that’s violet and fresh and looks like it hurts like a son of a bitch.

The bruise that is unmistakably _in the shape of a fucking hand print_.

Johnny pales and forces himself to let go of her arm. “Jesus, Carmen,” he says, voice too loud in the tiny office. “What the hell happened? Who did that to you?”

“I’m all right,” Carmen says again, and now he feels like an asshole because she doesn’t need to be reassuring _him_. “Just a little shaken up. And please, I don’t want Miggy to know. He’ll get upset.”

 _I_ _’m upset_ , Johnny thinks, but nods. “No, I get it. I won’t say anything.” He hesitates. “Are you banged up anywhere else? If we’re gonna do this, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Oh—I just have a little scrape on my shoulder,” she says, turning to reveal a patch of gauze that Johnny wouldn’t exactly call little neatly taped to her a shoulder.

Brick burn. She was pushed into a fucking wall. Johnny’s going to kill someone. “Is someone messing with you?”

“No no…I worked the late shift two nights ago. Normally I wait for one of my co-workers, and we walk to our car together.” She sighs, hand going to the bruise on her wrist, but her voice doesn’t waver. “It was a stupid thing to do, but I was so tired, so I left by myself. There was a man right outside the elevator. He followed me instead of getting in th elevator himself—saying things, you know—and when I told him to leave me alone, he grabbed me. Nothing happened, he just pushed me around a little, but…I was lucky. The elevator opened and he ran off.”

“You _were_ lucky,” Johnny says. He doesn’t want to scare her, but he needs her to get this. “Sickos like that don’t just happen to end up in sketchy parking lots after dark. He was waiting for you.”

Carmen pales, but nods. “I do carry one of those little pepper spray things, on my key chain? But I dropped it. I…” she looks ashamed. “I was afraid when he grabbed me. I didn’t know what to do, he was so much bigger—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Johnny. “You should be able to walk to your fucking car without some lowlife putting his hands on you.”

Johnny takes a deep breath, wills the angry hammering of his heart to slow. Carmen doesn’t need him react like a fucking cavemen and beat this guy’s ass, she needs him to teach her some _moves_. She asked him for help. He can do this. Wasn’t he just thinking about how he liked teaching? Sure, he teaches more in the vein of how to kick ass than women’s self-defense, but he can be useful here. “Listen. It doesn’t matter how much bigger someone is than you. Well, it does, but we can work with that. I’ll show you how to fuck up the next person who tries to mess with you.”

She laughs. “Just…knowing how to escape will do. I was just thinking maybe five private lessons?” she reaches for her purse. “I brought my checkbook, so—”

“Fuck your checkbook,” says Johnny. “This is on the house.”

“Johnny, no. You’re running a business—”

“No arguments,” he says firmly. “Don’t look at me like that, it’s not charity. Miguel does more than his fair share of helping with the newer students in class, he’s practically an assistant some days.”

Especially now that Kreese is gone, but Johnny doesn’t want to think about Kreese. Carmen looks proud, and she nods her thanks. “I do know a few things,” she says, unclipping her car keys from where they’re hanging on her purse.

Johnny stares as she carefully slots the keys between her fingers, making a fist. “What’s that supposed to do?”

“You know,” she says, and mimes a punch. “You punch them, with the keys.”

“All that’s gonna do is mess up your hands,” he says bluntly. “Where did you learn that?”

Carmen thinks about it, looking disgruntled. “I’m not sure. Everyone holds their keys like that.”

“What do you mean, everyone? You mean all the chicks you work with do that shit with their car keys?”

“Well…yes.”

Good lord. “C’mon. And bring those keys.”

“It would work, though,” she protests, following him onto the mat towards the BOB dummy.

“I see the theory behind it,” he admits, “but if you’re gonna use your keys, you’re better off using an icepick grip.”

Johnny adjusts the keys in her palm so that she’s gripping the biggest key, then folds her fingers around it. “Here. Now, you’re concentrating the entire force of your blow—” he taps the tip of the key “onto this tiny little point. But you gotta be smart about _where_ you’re stabbing this.”

“Stabbing it? Like a knife?”

“Kinda. Look, you’ve got a hammer fist strike to the side of the neck—you can stab down into the hollow of the throat or an eye…” he demonstrates on the dummy. “See?”

“That does seem stronger,” she admits. “It also seems more…violent.”

“It _is_ more violent. That’s why it’s gonna work.”

Carmen looks less than thrilled with this admission. “Couldn’t we focus more on me just getting away from grabs?”

“I’ll definitely show you how to break grabs and chokes, but…” his eyes flick to the bruise on her wrist. “That should probably heal first. Did you ice it?”

“I’m a nurse, Johnny, of course I iced it.”

“Right. But Carmen, look.” He waits until she sets the keys down and looks at him. “You said this guy was a lot bigger than you, right? You can’t just break his grip and run away or he’s gonna grab you again. You need to drop his ass first.”

“I don’t like the idea of hurting anyone.”

Oh boy. He’s gotta nip this in the bud, now. “Look, I get that. But if someone’s trying to hurt _you,_ you have to. You want to go home to your kid, right?”

For a moment, he thinks he’s pushed it too far, but then Carmen nods, something hardening in her eyes. “Alright. Show me what to do.”

“Now, what you wanna think about here is using hard body parts against soft targets. You don’t want to go slamming your fist against someone’s jaw right off the bat. You’ll fuck up your hand.” He eyes Carmen’s hands, long-fingered and fine-boned. “Actually, you probably shouldn’t punch someone in the face at all, with your job, but you gotta get the form right anyway. Here, make a fist.”

She does, curling her thumb over the tops of her fingers like he’s seen countless newbies do. “Around the front,” he says, taking her hand and adjusting. “There you go. Strong wrist, too. You right-handed? When you get into your fighting stance, you want your right hand back. That’s your power hand.”

Johnny walks her through some of the basic self-defense strikes: punch to the solar plexus, palm heel to the nose, web hand to the throat. He sees at once where Miguel gets his intensity from: Carmen is laser focused on the techniques, and she’s not bad, either. There’s a ferocity under her skin that he couldn’t teach in a million years. It’s all her.

When he starts talking about kiais, she giggles. “Do I have to do that yell thing?”

“Kiai,” he corrects. “And yeah, you have to do it when you strike. Well, you should.”

“What’s it do?”

“It makes you sound badass.”

“I don’t know if me yelling will trick anyone into thinking I’m a badass.”

“You _are_ a badass,” Johnny corrects, and she rolls her eyes a little. “Seriously. You work your ass off for your kid. You got him out of a bad situation when you were what, eighteen years old? That takes serious guts. You’re a stone cold badass, Carmen.”

Carmen grins, ducking her head. “Thank you, Johnny.”

“But you need the kiai to prove it. Look, they have an actual point. One, they distract your opponent. Two, it helps focus your energy. Hardens your body.” He taps his midsection. “It’s gotta come from here, okay? Try it.”

“I feel silly,” Carmen protests.

“Do it while you’re striking the dummy. Pretend he’s the asshole who grabbed you. Come on, do it!”

Carmen turns to face BOB, screws up her face, and palm heels the ever-loving fuck out of the dummy’s face, her kiai echoing through the dojo. Johnny’s face cracks into a grin. “Hell yeah! Do it again.”

She does, working methodically through the strikes Johnny’s just taught her, brow furrowed in concentration, until she leans against the dummy, panting. Johnny can’t stop grinning, until she turns to him and he sees the tears glistening in her eyes and almost has a heart attack. “Shit, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Carmen laughs a little, wiping at her eyes. “I’m okay, I just…thank you. I think I really needed this. It shook me up more than I thought.”

Johnny reaches out a hesitant hand, pats her shoulder awkwardly. “Hey, it’s okay. You got this. Fuck that asshole.”

“Thanks again, Johnny. There’s no rush on a second lesson, really, whenever you have time—”

“How’s tomorrow? Same time?”

“Tomorrow works. I’ll bring lunch.”

She’s about to walk out the door when he calls after her. “Carmen…don’t walk to your car like that alone at night. Just call me, if you need someone to walk you out.”

She smiles. “It’s very late, Johnny.”

“I don’t care. I’m probably up anyway.”

“That’s very sweet of you. But I won’t do that again, don’t worry. I do usually walk with a friend. I just got impatient.” Now it’s her turn to hesitate, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

Fuck, she’s cute. “What?”

“I was just thinking…maybe you could do some kind of seminar. You know. Like a woman’s self defense class.” She laughs at the look on his face. “I’m serious! You’re good at this!”

“I don’t know,” he hedges. Carmen is one thing, but a room full of women…there’s no way he won’t fuck that up. “I don’t know if I’m the best person to teach that.

“You’re teaching me,” she says. “Think about it. I could be your assistant.”

“…I’ll think about it.”

* * *

Johnny does think about it, the idea buzzing in the back of his brain throughout the rest of his classes and during his drive home. He’s still thinking about it when he wakes up in the morning. He’d always known those women’s self-defense seminars were a crock of shit. If that ridiculous key thing was the sort of shit being taught on those seminars, then maybe it wasn’t the worst idea for someone who knew what they were doing to teach the ladies of the valley how to throw a proper fucking punch.

He’s still thinking about it on his drive to the dojo the next morning, when he swings into the hardware store to get some spackle to repair a hole that Hawk had put in the wall. He’s so deep in thought that he almost smacks into someone on the way back to his car. “Sorry, man—”

And then he stops short because of course, _of course,_ the person he’s almost bowled over is none other than Daniel LaRusso, who doesn’t waste half a second before starting in on him.

“Off to vandalize some more private property?” Daniel says snootily.

Johnny jerks his head the hardware store. “Off to do another father-son bonding project with my kid?”

“Wouldn’t have to if I didn’t have a dojo to repaint, now would I?”

Honestly, the nerve of this guy. “Fuck _off,_ man, I’ve told you fifteen times already I didn’t know anything about that.”

“Sure you didn’t, Johnny.”

Daniel shakes his head and Johnny gives it up. He could tell Daniel that he’d reamed his students out good for the vandalism, that he’s really trying to make Cobra Kai better, that Kreese is gone, but what’s the point? Daniel LaRusso has made it clear that he thinks Johnny’s trash and Johnny’s not going to go seeking his approval. It’s not like he gives one single shit or anything.

There’d been like, five whole seconds when Johnny had thought they could be….he doesn’t know. Not friends, exactly, but maybe not bitter rivals. It had been too easy to talk to Daniel about his stepfather and Kreese in that shitty bar. They’d been in there for _hours_ and hadn’t stopped talking the whole time. It shouldn’t have felt so natural.

And then Daniel had to go and fuck it up by becoming his son’s _sensei._ They hadn’t even gotten their sparring session in. Sometimes Johnny wonders if that’s all it would take to dispel all these years of tension, one good, solid fight to clear the air. He’d win, obviously, but he can admit that Daniel’s got a few moves even though he’s scrawny. Size matters, but isn’t he teaching Carmen how to kick ass if someone bigger messes with her?

A thought occurs to Johnny. “Hey,” he calls out, just as Daniel’s about to get into his car. “Come here for a sec. Show me how you’d get out of this.”

He reaches and grabs Daniel’s wrist, who looks as if he’s about to have a heart attack on the spot. “Have you lost your mind? Get your hands off of me!”

Johnny rolls his eyes. “Relax, I’m not trying to mess with you. This time. I’m working on something and I wanna see how a smaller, weaker person would break this.”

Daniel glares at him. “Funny.”

He does something so fast Johnny doesn’t have time to make it out, but whatever it is, it hurts like a son of a bitch and it works, because Daniel is suddenly standing well out of grabbing distance and Johnny’s rubbing his own wrist. “I said show me how to get out of that, not try to break my fucking arm.”

“You’re the one who—look.” Daniel steps back closer to him, grabs Johnny’s hand, and wraps it back around his own wrist, all while watching Johnny suspiciously. “Alright, so, I hold your hand in place—”

He demonstrates again, slowly this time so Johnny can see what he’s doing, rotating his own hand around to press the blade of his hand onto the smaller bones of Johnny’s own wrist. “Ow. Shit, that’s effective though.”

“You can do it with a cross grab too, just gotta go the other way…” he shows him, then eyes Johnny. “Why do you need to know this, anyway? Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you usually teach.”

“I’m helping someone out. One of my kid’s moms.” he clarifies, when Daniel looks confused. “It’s been a while since I’ve done this basic self-defense shit.”

Daniel raises his eyebrows. “What, you’re doing parent classes now?”

“Nah. Some asshole was messing with her after work and it made her nervous. So, I thought I’d show her how to kick the shit out of the next jerk to try it.”

Something flickers across Daniel’s face that he can’t read. “Oh. That’s…well, look, that move will work, but she should probably do something to distract the guy first. Groin kick, or a knee. Something like that.” He eyes Johnny. “You know, since she’s probably _actually_ smaller.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

Daniel hesitates. “What else you teaching her?”

“Lots of hold breaking shit. How to get out of a bear hug, a choke. And some solid striking skills. You know,” he can’t resist adding, “strike first, strike hard. No mercy.”

To his shock, Daniel nods. “Well, if someone assaulted my daughter in a parking lot, I wouldn’t want her to show any mercy either. Hey, you should teach her how to get out of a hair pull. You know, if someone grabs her ponytail.”

Johnny hadn’t though about this, and it takes him a few seconds to respond, so startled is he that Daniel conceded the no mercy point, even in an extreme situation. “Uh. Yeah, good point.” He has to think about it. “You don’t have a ponytail for me to grab.”

They both grin at that. “Well, look, I don’t think it matters how short our hair is. The same principles apply, right? It’s just like the wrist grab, you hold the hand…”

They work through it for a few minutes, and Johnny steps back, begrudgingly impressed against his will. “Alright, well, thanks, man. That’s a pretty good idea.”

“Who did you say this was for this for, anyway?”

“Carmen. Miguel’s mom.”

A crazy idea blossoms in his head, so crazy that he reacts to it with a physical cringe: asking Daniel to help teach that dumb women’s self defense seminar Carmen had proposed. Daniel could say all that inspirational bullshit that would put a roomful of nervous women at ease, and Johnny could teach them how to straight up break the nose of anyone who messed with them. He knows the idea of them teaching together would only work in theory, not in practice, but— fuck it, he’s gonna bring it up for the satisfaction of watching Daniel’s eyes pop out of his head. “Hey, you know what’d be funny—”

The insane idea vanishes at once as Daniel’s eyes darken. “Yeah, well, maybe you should start with teaching Carmen’s son not to hit his girlfriend.”

Johnny gapes at him, caught off guard. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Daniel snaps. “He hit Sam at some party. It’s why she broke up with him.”

“Bullshit. You’re fucking lying.”

Daniel lifts an eyebrow at him. “Why would I lie about that?”

“How should I know why you do anything? Miguel’s a good kid. He wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Maybe you should ask him about it,” says Daniel. “So much for a new Cobra Kai, eh?”

Johnny contemplates hitting him to wipe that infuriating smirk off his face. Why did he think for even a second that they could teach something together, even as a joke? “Whatever.”

He shoulders past Daniel hard enough to jostle him, get in his car and drives off.

* * *

Johnny tries to put Daniel’s words out of his mind, but he can’t stop thinking about them. He knows Miguel, knows that he couldn’t have hurt Sam—but loathe though he is to admit it, he also can’t imagine why Daniel would lie about that. There’s got to be something he’s missing.

“Diaz,” he calls after class the next day. “Hang back for a sec?”

Miguel bounds over at once, his smile fading at whatever he sees in Johnny’s face. “Is everything okay?

“It’s fine, just wanna talk to you about something. Wait until your classmates are gone.”

Miguel looks even more anxious at that, but waits quietly until the last student has left. “What’s wrong?”

“Miguel.” He waits until Miguel stops fidgeting and gets right to the point. “Did you hit the LaRusso girl at some party while you were dating?”

“No!” Miguel looks stricken, and so guilty that Johnny instantly knows there’s more to the story. “I didn’t—it wasn’t like that, I swear it wasn’t!”

Johnny sighs and he gestures into his office, sits in the desk chair while Miguel drops into the seat across from him. “Alright, Diaz, out with it. What happened at this party?”

“I wasn’t trying to hit Sam. I _swear_ , sensei. I was trying to hit…” Miguel shifts, somehow finding a way to look even guiltier. “…I was trying to hit Robby.”

Johnny raises his eyebrows, makes a go-on gesture. “Okay, why were you trying to hit Robby?”

“Okay, so, Sam had been acting weird for days right, all cagey about wanting to introduce me to her family. I showed up to her house one night and saw Robby was over for dinner. I didn’t know who he was at the time, or that he was training with Mr. LaRusso.”

Jesus Christ. Daniel was having his kid join in on family dinner night, too? “So you thought she was cheating on you.”

“I didn’t know what to think. I was just…jealous. And upset.” Miguel shifts again, uncomfortable. “I thought maybe she was ashamed of me for not having money, or…something. I don’t know. Then the next day, she wasn’t answering any of her texts—I found out later she’d been grounded for some sort of car accident hit and run she’d been involved in. So I went to this party…”

Johnny leans forward, resting his head in his hands and scrubbing them over his face, all of the pieces slowly falling into place. Miguel’s anger at the tournament, his anger that felt so personal, so familiar. “Go on.”

“And I got drunk. Like, really drunk. And when she showed up with Robby…”

“You reacted like an asshole,” Johnny said, lifting his head and sighing. It’s exactly what he would have done—what he _had_ done—back in his high school days.

“Yeah,” said Miguel, looking guilty. “Robby and I started arguing, and I went to hit him but I was so off-balanced that I hit Sam instead. I know it’s not an excuse, and I should have listened to both of them first, but I’d never been that drunk before. Sensei, I swear, I didn’t mean to—”

“Alright, alright,” says Johnny. “I believe you. But you’re right, it’s not an excuse. Diaz, look. If you’re gonna drink at parties, you gotta pace yourself. If you’re getting so smashed that you end up starting fights—”

“Like you haven’t gotten in drunk fights before,” Miguel mutters, looking sullen.

“Why do you think I’m telling you this?” He waits until Miguel nods and meets his eyes before continuing. “If you’re getting so drunk that you’re starting fights and end up hitting your girl, you’ve had way too much. No one wants to be around a mean or angry drunk.”

Miguel looks so miserable that Johnny gets up to sit on the edge of the desk closer to him, clapping a hand to his shoulder. “You made a mistake. You’re a sixteen year old kid, everyone makes mistakes at that age. You learned from this, yeah?”

“Yes. I will never drink that much again,” Miguel says fervently. “I didn’t like how it made me feel. Like I was so out of control. I feel awful about what happened.”

“And you apologized to the LaRusso girl?”

Miguel nods. “She’s still furious at me. About everything.” He looks up. “I really didn’t have anything to do with vandalizing Miyagi-do, sensei. And I found the medal of honor and brought it back to the LaRussos.”

“I know you didn’t.” He pauses, more relieved than he wants to admit about Daniel LaRusso getting that stupid medal of honor back. Would’ve been nice if the asshole had led with that when they’d met in the parking lot. “You’re a good kid. Now get out of here and go catch up with your friends. Keep them out of trouble.”

Miguel grins at him. “I’ll try. See you tomorrow?”

Johnny watches him run off and thinks about timing. The kicker is, he’s pretty sure LaRusso would’ve loved Miguel if they’d met under different circumstances. He can’t imagine why Samantha wouldn’t want to introduce the kid to her family, but—what a mess.

The dojo is quiet for the next hour while Johnny waits for Carmen. Johnny feels restless in a way he usually doesn’t here, and walks around picking up pads and straightening up the dojo, feeling weirdly nervous, until the door open and Carmen walks in. She smiles at him. “How was class?”

“Fine, fine…”

He’s still a little distracted as he follows her onto the mat, his conversations with Daniel and Miguel still running through his head.

“Johnny, if you’re tired we can meet tomorrow.”

He blinks a little and looks down to find her eyebrows raised, as if she’s called his name several times. “I don’t want to work you too hard.”

“What? No no, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I can work with your other instructor too if you need a—”

“No way,” he says loudly. Carmen stares at him. “I mean…it’s just me now. Kreese is gone.”

She tilts her head, suspicious and concerned all at once. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he says, and sighs when Carmen continues to stare. He can’t get shit past her. It’s infuriating, but he also likes it. A lot. “He was my sensei, I don’t know if Miguel told you. Karate was a little different in the eighties, at least his brand of it. I thought he’d maybe changed, but in the end…”

“I’m sorry,” says Carmen. “It’s not easy, finding out someone you cared for isn’t the person you thought they were.”

He can tell from her tone that she’s divined there’s much more to the story than he’s saying, layers upon layers of history that he just—can’t. Johnny looks at her then, really looks at her—at the dark circles under her eyes from working too much, at the straight set of her shoulders, at the mottled bruising on her wrist and her arms. He remembers the stinging slap to his cheek when he’d brought Miguel home after the Halloween dance, remembers her beating the shit out of the dummy just yesterday, remembers the story she’d told him about leaving her husband at eighteen. _Eighteen_ , probably scared out of her fucking mind but not giving a single shit about anything except protecting her kid.

Steel. This woman is made of fucking _steel._

“Come here,” says Johnny, and she steps closer to him, the look in her eyes unreadable as he brings a hand to her hair, fisting gently around her ponytail. “Alright, so here’s what you’re gonna do if some jerk off grabs your hair…”

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to my own sensei + 10 years of ninjutsu for giving me a solid foundation on which to write cobra kai fic, this is clearly the most important benefit of all those dojo hours
> 
> ALSO important note: don’t mind Johnny, there IS a lot of good stuff in woman’s self-defense classes and I encourage everyone to take one (not that we should have to, BUT. YOU KNOW.)
> 
> **HOW AM I GONNA MAKE IT UNTIL JANUARY 8TH SEND HELP**


End file.
